[PLUG] The lion in Salem

Paul Mullen pem at nellump.net
Wed Aug 27 12:45:03 UTC 2003


On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 12:30:12PM -0700, Brent Rieck wrote:
> 
> Do you ever get the urge to take a police car for a spin when you see
> one idling at the curb?  You know, just to make sure the motor pool is
> taking good care of the cars?  You pay for it after all.
> 
> Do you feel that the telephone switch in your neighborhood is your's
> because you pay your phone bill and it's used to route your telephone
> calls?  Or that Bonneville Dam is yours to do with as you like because
> you buy power indirectly from it?  Even perhaps that the copy machine at
> Kinko's is yours because you pay to make copies on it there?

The important distinction here being that I can freely choose not to do
business with Kinko's, the BPA, and the phone company (to use your
examples) and resonably expect that men with guns are *not* going to
come take me away. You can't say that about government institutions. Of
course, what this conversation really demonstrates is the absurdity of
the concept of so-called "public property."


Paul





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